The headlines are often about scale: more than $280 billion in stablecoins now circulate globally, with $20–30 billion traded daily on blockchain networks.
That puts them in the same league as established payment providers. But scale is only part of the story.
Behind the numbers lies a more complex reality. Stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and central bank digital currencies (“CBDCs”) are not interchangeable. Each carries different advantages, risks, and limitations. For businesses, the question is not whether digital money will matter, but which form of it to trust, integrate, and plan around.
Stablecoins: speed with caveats
Stablecoins thrive where speed and global reach are critical. They operate on open blockchains, moving value across borders in minutes and at low cost. For corporates making international supplier payments, the savings are clear, with reductions of up to 60% compared with traditional banking channels.
Yet trust is not uniform. Fully reserved tokens with transparent audits have consistently maintained their peg. Others have not. The collapse of TerraUSD showed how quickly confidence can evaporate when reserves are opaque.
Frameworks like MiCA in the EU are bringing order by requiring issuers to be licensed and fully backed. In the US, the GENIUS Act became law in July 2025 and will become effective after rulemaking, with a grace period until July 2028. Until then, the market still contains a mix of robust and fragile offerings. Businesses need to choose carefully.
Tokenised deposits: familiar but closed
For firms looking for digital speed without leaving the banking perimeter, tokenised deposits provide a regulated option. Issued by commercial banks, these tokens represent liabilities already backed by deposits. They can be used for near-instant settlement, with the reassurance of deposit insurance and reversibility if errors occur.
The trade-off is openness. Tokenised deposits operate in closed systems, JPMorgan’s JPM Coin works only within its network, for instance. Unless interoperability expands across banks and jurisdictions, they will remain powerful but limited.
CBDCs: stability with conditions
CBDCs are the sovereign answer. Eleven countries have already launched them, while over 100 are running pilots. China’s e-CNY has over 260 million wallets in use, and the European Central Bank is advancing its work on a digital euro.
They carry the ultimate assurance: a direct claim on the central bank. But they also come with design questions. Will privacy be protected? Could citizens move deposits out of commercial banks en masse, creating financial instability? How much conditionality will governments impose on how CBDCs can be spent?
For businesses, the promise is clear, instant, low-cost, government-backed payments. The uncertainty lies in the policy choices that central banks will make.
The coexistence reality
The future will not belong to a single winner. Each form of digital money serves different needs. Public stablecoins provide global reach, tokenised deposits keep activity within regulated banking systems, and CBDCs safeguard sovereignty.
A treasurer in the near future may use all three: stablecoins for cross-border suppliers, deposit tokens for intra-group liquidity, and a CBDC for domestic payroll. The real challenge is not choosing one rail but building systems flexible enough to operate across several.
Questions for decision-makers
As adoption accelerates, finance leaders should be asking:
- Which digital money rails align best with our business needs?
- How do we assess trust, whether through reserves, audits, or sovereign backing?
- Are our treasury systems ready to integrate multiple formats?
- How do we prepare for regulation that is advancing but uneven?
The businesses that engage with these questions now will be best placed to benefit from cost savings, faster settlement, and greater flexibility as digital money becomes standard.
Download the full eBook – Global payments reimagined
Global payments reimagined provides a detailed comparison of stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and CBDCs, along with regulatory developments and practical use cases.
Download the eBook to explore the trade-offs in depth and understand how digital currencies are likely to shape the financial system in the years ahead.
